After a long week, and a very long last 30 hours of self-torture, I have finally completed my entry for this awesome contest!

FFXIII is an awesome game series, Lightning is an awesome character, and Tetsuya Nomura is an awesome artist. With all three of these awesomenesses involved in one contest, how could I stay away?

Inspiration for the outfit came from Cid Raines. He is one of my favorite ever NPCs in a game series. Since they were both members of the military/government at some point or another, I figured it would be cool to combine their styles! I also really like the crystal theme of the series, and since I had been considering drawing Lightning together with this theme already, it was a perfect opportunity to do this horrible evil nightmare creating sparkly crystal background.

There are a lot of awesome entries out there, so I almost didn't have the guts to even finish. But in the end I did, and I'm happy that I continued working on it.

Thank you for all of the mental support! And my brother, who is currently snoring on my bed. orz

Now after I finally get some sleep, I have to get to work.I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

This is absolutely gorgeous! I honestly don't know what else to say, but I wish this costume was in the game! I absolutely love how you sort of mixed Cid's outfit to fit with Lightning's solemn personality in LR! My favorite by far!

Yes! He just had something about him that made him very likeable (maybe it was the fact that I just wanted him in my party really badly). His design was also really nice, so that helps too.Haha, thank you!